The present invention comprises an entertainment apparatus and method entertaining a group of players and for developing useful human skills including, but without being limited to, the game player's ability to generate original writings for movie and television productions, or scripts to comprise literary works. At the same time, the present invention addresses developing the user's acting, improvisational and public speaking abilities.
Until now, games which involved story telling have required players to tell their own story or to assemble their own story by various means. But in none of the prior art has there been a game in which players take turns in creatively stringing together phrases inscribed on cards held in their hands by taking turns playing the cards, one-at-a-time, to amuse and teach themselves mental quick-response and creative thinking skills. Also, none of the prior art games has a director who functions in the manner of the present invention. The director in the present invention not only selects what kind of story or scenario the players are to develop, but also selects the deck or decks of cards from which individual players will be dealt cards to be played.
In the prior art, for instance, U.S. Pat. No 4,684,135 to Bouchal discloses a story telling game. It includes the use of cards, dice and wild cards. Provides cards with graphic images and dice--but Bouchal '135 does not utilize judgment or selectivity by a director or player-group of the appropriateness of play or directorial arbitrary authority as does the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,699,132 to Buchanan is a movie game with a director and a scheme for the players to decide upon the rules of playing the game. It provides random plot-contriving and schooling of the players in the art or science of story or play writing, with players enabled to weave a story from a game having general structural divisions of a story, each division having a plurality of otherwise unrelated descriptive matters whereby a player or players may be enabled to weave a story from a chance selection of any one of the descriptive matters from each and all of the divisions when collected in their sequential order.
Buchanan '132 differs from the present invention in the following ways. Buchanan '132 provides for a pre-printed game board which imposes story elements which game players view at all times. In the present invention, however, dialog cards with dialog phrases inscribed thereon are held in players' hands to be played as desired without forewarning to other players. Further, the nature of the story to be developed in Buchanan '132 may be generally indeterminate at the start of the game, but is necessarily defined by the pre-written story elements which are already displayed on the game board at the start of play.
Furthermore, play of the game in Buchanan '132 is completely random, and not player-selected or supervised by a director with whom the players can interact, as in the present invention. Buchanan '132 does not provide for players to select the dialog elements to be played as in the present invention. Instead, Buchanan '132 provides for this to happen randomly, thus strongly distinguishing Buchanan '132 from the player selection of dialog elements to be added to the game of the present invention. Further, the director in Buchanan '132 is chosen randomly and not at the beginning of play as in the present invention. The director of Buchanan '132 has no game-determining arbitrary authority as does the director of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,100,154 to Mullins discloses a timed group writing game with random characterizations. Several short stories are composed and a timer is used to limit writing time. Sets of cards provide character profiles for each player's main character. Participants compose the beginnings of a short story in the genre chosen, about a character described by the character cards and write as much as possible in a set time limit. At the end of the time limit, stories are passed to the player at the left of the writer.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,791,708 to Bridges is a children's' card game inculcating safety specifically. It uses inscribed cards to generate safety slogans.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,401,032 to Barnhart, et al provides a game having a number of cards on which a story is written. Certain elements of the story are obscured by chromatic camouflage. A decoder having a chromatic filter is used to view the obscured indicia. The game involves inferring words and meaning from pictures provided along with text, and does not involve creating a story line by the players.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,445,869 to Wasserman provides a teaching method and apparatus for writing using decks of cards including "who" "where" and "how" cards among other kinds of decks of cards in an organizational plan for writing. The teaching method includes several different cards having key words such as WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY and HOW printed at the top. The individual to be taught picks a topic and chooses the first card with the word WHO on it. The individual then decides who the characters are going to be in his story and writes them on the card. Thus, Wasserman '869 uses "who" "where" and "how" cards but does so very differently from the present invention which merely uses them to set the scene for the entire group of game players simultaneously--rather than as a stimulus for individual character generation as in Wasserman '869.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,779,557 to Kritzberg provides a psychological therapy game played by a patient and a therapist. Its purpose and plan is to evoke thoughts and behaviors from the patient which the therapist can observe and evaluate so as to diagnose and to treat. It is not a game for a group of players, nor is it for amusement,
U.S. Pat. No. 1,716,069 to Loayza provides a tile or card game to work out or tell a story--either historical or fictional--but which story already exists and is merely being retold. The story is not being developed from a dangling dialog end as in the present invention with the outcome of the story amusingly in question at every moment.
British Patent 273,279 dated 1st Oct., 1907 provides for a game comprising a single deck of cards with the cards having quotations or verses or portions of verses thereon--with the fragments of verses or quotations being distributed among related cards, say of a given suit. Thus, matching the cards of a suit in a player's hand also pieces together the phrase or verse. Such an apparatus and method is far removed from the game of the present invention.